RTX-powered Portal has a release date. (Opens in a new tab) But what kind of hardware will you need to play this ray-traced, nicely updated version of Valve's iconic puzzle-platforming epic?

Today, Nvidia released a breakdown of minimum and recommended system specs. And it is interesting for both Nvidia and AMD GPU owners.

According to Nvidia, a minimum GeForce RTX 3060 (opens in new tab) is required to play Portal RTX at high 1080p settings and achieve "playable" frame rates of around 30fps. This table shows RTX 3060s that support DLSS 2. It is not absolutely explicit, but it does suggest that an RTX 3060 running on the High setting (not Ultra) will hit playable numbers around 30 fps with DLSS enabled. Keep in mind that.

Moving up the scale, Nvidia similarly recommends the RTX 3080 to play Portal at 60fps or better on RTX at 1080p high resolution. (Open in new tab) Again, this is not an Ultra setting, just a High setting, and Nvidia also lists the RTX as "with DLSS 2". Finally, at the top end, all you need to play at 60 fps at 4K Ultra is an RTX 4080 with DLSS 3 (opens in new tab).

It is immediately understandable that you would not want to play Portal RTX without DLSS: if your RTX 3060 is only capable of 30 fps with DLSS, it will almost certainly be well below 30 fps with DLSS off.

This is especially important for AMD GPU owners. It is not at all clear whether add-on packs will work on AMD GPUs. However, from a fundamental standpoint, there is no obvious reason why they should not. But there is certainly no DLSS to help speed things up. Furthermore, considering AMD's relative weakness in ray-tracing performance, even with the latest Radeon RX 7000, according to AMD's own numbers (open in new tab), and the fact that Nvidia would have put little effort into making it work well on AMD hardware the overall implications are quite poor. Indeed, it is unlikely that Nvidia will support AMD's FSR technology.

That would be a shame. After all, Portal is one of the great PC games and the RTX reboot mod is a great reason to revisit it. However, we should also remember that Portal was never about graphics. If there was ever a title where the gameplay was the main focus, it is definitely "Portal". So we don't need an excuse to revisit a masterpiece rendered in RTX. But if you can experience the full ray-traced spectacle, you should.

For more information and videos, visit the official Nvidia Portal with RTX landing page (opens in new tab).